More on the popular vote: Did Kennedy win it in 1960? Does it matter?

John F. Kennedy with his brothers: Even if he lost the 1960 popular vote, that doesn't matter. He made a smart move picking LBJ as his running mate to shore up his Southern front.AP Photo | John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, White House, Cecil Stoughton

As I noted in my Thursday column, it wasn't so long ago that politicians on the state level had lots of fun getting creative with the Electoral College.

It turns out that in Alabama that year neither Richard Nixon nor John F. Kennedy won the most electors.

Here's what Sean Trende has to say about how that worked out:

Three states -- Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama -- offered unpledged slates of electors. In Louisiana, the unpledged delegates came in third place to Kennedy and Nixon, receiving only 21 percent of the vote. In Mississippi, the unpledged electors won, edging out Kennedy by three percentage points; those electors eventually voted for Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia.

But Alabama did something very, very different. At the time, voters there did not cast ballots for Democratic or Republicans tickets. Instead, they cast 11 votes, one for each elector from the state. Thus, it was possible to cast six votes for Republican electors, and five votes for Democratic electors, if one so chose.

Those electors had been selected by the parties in the primary. In the 1960 Alabama Democratic primary, 24 electors ran as unpledged, refusing to be bound by the decision of the Democratic convention.

Trende goes on to argue, pretty convincingly, that if you divvy up the popular vote in the way that most closely reflects each candidate's support, then it looks like Nixon actually won the national popular vote that year.

Not that it matters. Trende goes on to caution against making too much of the popular vote:

Of course, the most important thing to remember is that we don't award victories by popular vote, and that campaigns structure their strategies accordingly. Absent an Electoral College, Kennedy probably wouldn't have selected LBJ as his running mate and instead would have made a play in the vote-rich Midwest. But as a matter of historical accuracy, there are almost certainly five instances where the candidate won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College.

That's always good advice. Media outlets love to cite surveys of the popular vote, but that's mainly because it's easy to do.

The candidates do not compete for that vote, however. The real fight is state-by-state.
And that's where this race will be won or lost.

At the moment, it's a real barn-burner. Anyone who tells you he knows who will win is someone you shouldn't listen to.

And especially don't listen to anyone who cites polling on the national popular vote.

ALSO: Note this piece on how a mere four counties in Ohio could swing the election. This is further evidence that these races can't be judged by popular-vote totals - even though Drudge keeps citing them..